Pine Ridge
The 
headquarters for Henry Coe State Park lies along Pine Ridge, one of the
higher
ridges of the Diablo Range inside the park. The highpoint of this ridge is located less
than half a mile from, and 400ft above the parking lot, making for a rather easy outing.
We got up early to get the hiking in while it was still cool in the morning - Spring was
starting to warm up around here. 
The hills
continue to be a bright green, but already
there were signs that they would soon start to turn brown. The grasses had mostly gone
to seed and 
the flowers
were doing their best to bloom in many colors to attract insects, get themselves
pollinated, and be down with it. We found there were two summits to Pine Ridge. The
west summit, with a VABM we couldn't find and marked with an elevation of
3,009ft on the topo map, proved to be the lower of the two. The unmarked and unlabeled
east summit, about
5min away, showed to be about 10ft higher according to the GPS. This east summit is just
north of the 
Henry Coe Monument
placed to honor the man for whom the park is named.
In addition to the video footage Jackie was 
shooting, we did a little
geocaching while in the area, 
finding
three before deciding to call it quits. We spent a little more than
an hour covering just over 2 miles.
Christmas Hill
Christmas Hill is the highpoint of 
Christmas Hill Park,
the site of the World Famous
Gilroy Garlic Festival. Held every summer, it has become a South Bay classic of 100F
temperatures mixed with rampant public drunkeness. At other times, like today, it is a
quiet little park west of Gilroy and Uvas Creek. It, too, has two summits,
and again the 
east one was higher. We visited both in a
meandering route 
starting from the more
manicured part of the park, wandering through the 
"natural" area which turns
out to be a pleasant enough mix of oak and grassy hillsides, 
poison oak
waiting in vast quantities
for anyone who might venture off the trail. The views take in parts of the Santa Clara
Valley around Gilroy to the east and the Santa Cruz Mtns to the west. This proved to be
an even shorter outing - less than a mile. It doesn't get much easier than this...